After sixteen kings had ruled in this kingdom, a conflict in the reigning family and an invasion of the Shans brought about the dissolution of this realm also. After his death there is no important event for nearly four hundred years. His kingdom included much of the country that the Kings of Tagaung and Old Pagan had held. He was a warlike king, and fought the Chinese with success. Sawdi is said to have ruled seventy-five years, and died in the year 243 AD. Sawdi became king at the death of the hermit. On the death of the king, however, he did not at once succeed to the throne, but allowed a hermit called Rathekyaung to rule for fifteen years. Without delay he set to work and destroyed them, and the king married him to his daughter, declaring him at the same time Binshe-min. He found the people of the new kingdom suffering from a plague of savage animals and flying monsters, which devoured men, women and children. When Pagan was founded he left Male and came down to the new capital, where he lived in the house of a peasant of the Pyu race, and so is sometimes spoken of as Pyu-minti or Pyu Sawdi. There was, however, living at Male in the Upper Irawadi a young man named Sawdi, a direct descendant of a younger brother of the blind twins who had been put on board a raft and sent down the Irawadi to Prome. That race had come to an end in Prome two centuries before, and the last king of the dynasty, then ruling in Prome, adopted a son from whom Thamokdarit was descended. He was not directly descended from the old kings of Tagaung. After the destruction of Tagaung, a second kingdom was established at Old Pagan in the immediate vicinity.Īfter thirteen years' wandering King Thamokdarit founded New Pagan in the year 107-108 AD. A rigorous interpretation of the founding date of AD 107 given in the Glass Palace Chronicle (Pe Maung Tinand Luce 1923) would be that this date is entirely mythological. According to the chronicles, Bagan was founded in AD 107 by the Thamoddarit and ruled by a line of 55 kings. It is recorded that the Burmans, a people closely related to the Pyu, established settlements at Papan on the banks of the Irrawaddy in Upper Burma as early as the second century AD. In fact, several early kingdoms had developed prior to the emergence of the Kingdom of Pagan in the mid-ninth century. If such a civilization as Pagan emerged suddenly, the argument went, surely the stimulant was external. The obvious answer was Theravada Buddhism religion could have provided the catalytic factor. As a result, scholars looked for some catalytic factor that would turn an arid, semi-desert area into one of the region's most productive civilizations, competing with the magnificent civilization of Angkor in nearby Cambodia in irrigation technology, material wealth, and artistic development, if not in political power. Ethnic Shan rulers, who established a political center at Ava, filled the ensuing political vacuum for a short time.īut the academic study of the Pagan period had preempted study of its predecessor, so it seemed as if the Pagan Kingdom had suddenly sprouted from the dry, inhospitable plains of central Burma. The Pagan Dynasty lasted until 1287 when a Mongol invasion destroyed the city.
It is during this period that Theravada Buddhism first made its appearance in Burma, and the Pagan kings built a massive city with thousands of pagodas and monasteries along the Irrawaddy River. The first such unification came with the foundation of the Pagan Dynasty in 1044 AD, which is considered the "Golden Age" in Burmese history. Myanmar - Pagan Dynasty AD 1044-1287 (AD 107-1287)īurma was unified by Burman dynasties three times during the past millennium.